The readability report scores your document for readability, cohesion and information density. These scores provide the author with an indication of how well their intended audience will understand their text. The scores use a variety of computational linguistic techniques to determine the reading level of the text, such as how frequently each word occurs in everyday language. Other readability measures, including those used in Microsoft Word, use word length to rate difficulty which ranks words such as ‘information’ and ‘business’ as difficult even though they are in common use. The report will grade your document as either ‘Simple’, Easy’, ‘Good’, ‘Challenging’ or ‘Difficult’. The extension also uses SmartTags to highlight difficult words and phrases in your text, as identified by http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/. The ‘SimpleText SmartTags’ provide suitable alternatives for these phrases which can be inserted automatically into the text.
The ‘Brain Overload Report’ measures the information density in the text. An expert in a particular subject will often use specific terms and jargon resulting in too much information being presented to the reader within a short space. This can lead to learners become fatigued and confused. This report analyses how many concepts and ideas are referred too in your text and rates your document as either ‘General’, ‘Introductory’, ‘Scholarly’, ‘Technical’ or ‘Specialised’.
The ‘Cohesion Report’ uses techniques for automatic summarisation to measure how easy your document is to follow. It highlights the sentence which should be the most representative of your document and shows the words which are the strongest themes. This measure is for documents about a specific subject, fictional writing will often score low for cohesion. A document will be graded as either ‘Creative’, ‘Digressing’, ‘Consistent’, ‘Coherent’ or ‘Fluent’.
An option is provided for a detailed report which allows authors to view the readability score of each sentence in their document. This is particularly useful for seeing which sentences are not adding to the cohesion of your document. This extension also provides results from some of the older readability measures, including those used in Word, such as:

After installation, a tool bar will appear with 4 buttons for 'Readability Report', 'Brain Overload Report', 'Cohesion Report' and 'Detailed Report'. If it is not there, select View from the menu bar, then Toolbars and 'Add-On 1'. Version 2 requires around 1GB of memory, if you don't have that try the earlier version which doesn't include the Brain Overload and Coherence reports and is run by selecting 'Readability' from the menu bar. N.B. The 'Detailed Report' is displayed as a spreadsheet in 'Calc' and will not work unless 'Calc' is installed. If you see the error: (com.sun.star.uno.RuntimeException){{ Message = "[jni_unobridge error ], then go to Menu -> Tools -> Options -> Java and check the detected Java Runtime Environment as it is not always enabled by default.

The tools offered in Readability Report sound extremely useful. Please update the add-on to be compatible with Open Office 4. The other grammar tools lack readability scales and many of the comments mention grammar correction errors.

PNI Error. Cannot complete download. I'm using the latest copy of OpenOffice for Mac. I keep getting a Java Runtime error when I try to install. Java settings enabled so there is no reason for this. I'd really love to try this app but with the current version it's not going to happen.

The Readability extension is not working on OpenOffice 4.0 running on Windows or on Xubuntu. In the code for AOO some changes were made to toolbar libraries and elsewhere. The extension should be tweaked as necessary.

i access internet through library, download to flashdrive for my offline computer running windows xp pro. I installed Latest version of Open Office on my computer. I got this extension- ReadabilityReport. Extension Manager recognizes it in flashdrive but get error message- "The status of this extension is unknown" When I change ".zip" to ".oxt" , the . zip stays at the end of the folder name. and I get same error message. I put the files in a folder named "ReadabilityReport.oxt" , but Extension Manager does not recognize it. The only folder recognized by Extension Manage is the one downloaded to flash drive, but get the error message.
On starting my computer just now, I get the message:
" JRE required Openoffice.org requires a Java runtime environmnet JRE to perform this task. Please install a JRE and restart Openoffice.org"
Does anyone know how to fix this?
Thank you!

Hello, great tool I would like to use but I've got the quite same installation problem with the java loader. Hope this will be fixed.
By the way, as a French user I would be pleased to use the
- Kandel & Moles formula (A Modified Flesch Reading Ease tailored towards french text as Reading Ease = 209 – (0.68 * ( Syllables / Words)) – (1.15 * ( words / Sentences))
- the LIX and/or RIX index ?

I keep getting this error when attempting to download this extension. I really need this one too. PLEASE help! I am desperate! I am a writer and I am used to using a similar tool with Word documents, although I despise Word. So I love the OpenOffice and everything about it. I had this before, but when I removed the program to download the new one, it removed all my extensions too.

"Could not create Java implementation loader." I have been able to download other extensions, but not this one, which I desperately need.

Would it be possible to improve the Coherence measure through using a sort of "fuzzy logic", or something to identify relationships between words or ideas? It seems to only look for identical words without context and this seems to give off false positives as well as ignore branching ideas that relate to the subject. I only have a very rudimentary understanding of this so I may be asking for something that doesn't make sense, or if I am asking for something beyond the bounds of how this is supposed to operate. Even with this, the readability extension blows anything else I have seen out of the water.

There is a new version of Readability Report now available for Microsoft Word 2010. It includes all the features in this version as well as some new ones including:

Authors can now import their own terminology to specifically tailor the readability formulas for their particular audience. This stops words and phrases, which are used frequently by their audience, from being considered as difficult by some of the readability formulas. Using a terminology allows expert authors to determine the difficulty of their text to other experts.

SimpleText suggestions are now implemented as a grammar checker. This control will highlight difficult words and phrases in the text and provide suitable alternatives which can be inserted automatically into the text.

The author can view the top 25 easiest or the top 25 hardest sentences in their documents. The criteria for determining the sentence difficulty can be changed by using checkboxes to select which readability measures are used.

I've been looking for a plugin for Word 2010 for some time and would really love to try the Readability plugin, especially after reading through the white paper. I downloaded the zip file from http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-gb/applications/readability-plugin-for-microsoft-word-2010-12884923832. But I get an error when I try to install. I actually get "Customized functionality in this application will not work because the certificate used to sign the deployment manifest for Readability or its location is not trusted." I tried a couple of hacks but no luck. Well actually I got a new and different error: "Deployment and application do not have matching security zones." I am hoping you can update the certificate information or let me know how to install.
Many thanks!

I like to thank everyone for the positive feedback and to let you know that the new version (2.04) fixes the compatability problems with Open Office 3.3 and LibreOffice. Everything should work fine now.

when I install or try to enable after installation. I am using Vista with all SP installed
and have had no trouble with any other extensions to date. I would really like to use
this extension as I am a writer/author and was quite excited to see it. Help!!!

I have problems with this extension in OpenOffice 3.3 on Windows XP - it crashes OO!
I'd had this extension before, probably version 0, there was no version number. I didn't use it really, because there was no toolbar 'Add-On 1'.
When I installed current version 2-beta, I couldn't start Writer at all! I get "runtime error" in soffice.bin. I couldn't remove it, so I deleted files from user folder. That didn't help also. It still remained in configmgr.ini, backenddb.xml and uno_packages.db, which was the biggest problem. I solved it finally by deleting extensions cache.
Now, I restored user profile from backup but I still have this old version. I'd like to remove it, but I can't. Any help?

When I checked my local copy of "ReadabilityReport.oxt", I couldn't unzip it. So it may be the problem from the beginning. Anyway, I have a problem with this extension, something as "Cannot forcibly remove an extension".
When I try to install v2.0 now, I get something as "(com. sun. star. uno.RuntimeException) { { Message = "bad root element in file://.../user/uno_packages/cache/registry/com.sun.star.comp.deployment. configuration. PackageRegistryBackend/23AE.tmp_/SimpleTextRecognizer. xcu", Context = (com. sun. star. uno.XInterface) @0 } }. And problems as I described. So, I can neither remove the old version nor install the new one.
I wouldn't like to erase my profile, because of customizations I made. That's the same old profile even from OO 2.x.

There was a problem with version 3.3 of Open Office but it is fixed now. Uninstall open office and then delete the Open Office folder in Program Files (or wherever you installed it). Reinstall Open Office and then the latest version of the plugin and everything should be fine.

I'm running the most current version of OO on a Windows 7 platform. No problems with installation or running the extension. I am so happy someone finally wrote this one. I'm a novelist and I regularly have to open manuscripts on another computer so I can check readability in Microsoft Office....makes me a bit of a hypocrite since I'm always singing OO's praises lol.

I also love that it gives you the most 'challenging' sentence in the document. In this case it happened to be one of my favorite sentences so it stays, but it is still good to know!

I have been searching for a writing assessment utility of some sort that will effectively help bring the functionality of the utility my school currently uses on DOS (yeah, that's right -- DOS!) over to the Windows side of our computers. Rather than overstuff this comment section with background information on my situation, I humbly refer you to my forum post:

Nearly everyone under the sun in the OOo community that I have discussed this quest with on various mailing lists has referred me to your Readability Report extension. Readability Report seems to be the answer I've been looking for, but as it stands now, it unfortunately does not appear to offer the capability to tabulate all of the output statistics I listed on that forum post that my school needs in order to gauge progress in writing according to IEP objectives. Hence, I am making every effort to contact you to see if there is some way to add the functionality to Readability Report that my school needs. If you need anonymized student samples paired up with the old CritiWriter data I have obtained for testing purposes, just say the word and I would be more than happy to do my part in helping you make this happen.

now the surprise was the result:
Brain Overload Report
Brain Overload Score: 6.20 which is rated INTRODUCTORY

Low cohesion occurs when new information is presented to the reader without making clear its connection to what has occurred previously. This score measures how easy your document is to follow.
Cohesion Measure: 1% which is rated CREATIVE

Installed on Ubuntu 9.10 with OpenOffice 3.1.1 and I don't see any buttons or an "Add-On 1" in the View->Toolbars menu. The SmartTags appears to be working, but I can't get to any of the other features. Any suggetions?

I downloaded and installed the extension (thanks!!). I can see the four buttons in the toolbar but when I click on any of them (no matter if the text is marked or not), nothing happens.
How does it work?

I am using Open Office 3.1.1 on Mandriva Linux and have added this extension (it is enabled in the extensions manager) but do not see a menu item or button to access the function, i.e., I don't see a 'Readability' option on the menu bar. Do I need to customize or activate something? Thanks in advance - I probably just missed something obvious ...

It may be that the extension wasn't really installing even though it appeared to in the extension manager. I noticed the Disable and Remove buttons for the other extensions already installed were grayed out indicating insufficient privilege to perform those actions. I opened a console, su'd to root, and started Open Office from the command line. This time the for single user or all users dialog came up (like the installation instructions say it should) and the extension installed. I closed Open Office and started it from the KDE menu as a regular user and the Add-On 1 toolbar was there without me adding it! I will try this in Windows 7 and see how it turns out - probably not an issue there. Perhaps this is only a Mandriva distribution issue.
Anyway, thanks very much - this is a great extension and capability. The detailed report characterizing each sentence is awesome. Now I know my resume is written to a different level than I intended ...

Follow-up: I checked this is Windows 7 - it works great. Thanks again.

As a professional writing narrative reports, I used readibility index tools in stand-alone software and with another word processing program.
I found these tools helpful in the past and I'm glad to see they're now available for use with Open Office.
Your next version might include reminders showing the range for "normal" audiences vs more sophisticated readers.
//Don K.

I really like this and use it all the time - I create leaflets for the public, so getting readability right is crucial for what I do. The only problem I find is that, if I have a bulleted list without a full stop at the end of each line, it reads all the bulleted lines as a single sentence - which can obviously affect sentence length stats etc. Obviously, I could cope with this by putting full stops at the end of each bulleted line, but we don't have this for our final drafts and it can get tedious putting in full stops and taking them out again. It also sometimes seems to read a heading as part of the subsequent sentence. So - if this could be sorted as well as recognising bulleted lines a sentences, my score for this would go up to 5.

Thanks for your comments Philip, it's nice to know some people find it useful. This is still an early version of readability report, the next version is coming soon which will solve a lot of the problems you're having.

I am delighted that someone has finally created this type of program for OO. I would often use the one in Word and would even copy and paste text from OO to Word to get a quick assessment. RR gives the essential data, However, if you are not familar with each index, RR does not help to interpret the data. I would have given it a higher rating if it would have included more information in the summation report.

The add-on is installed on the main menu and gives your a choice of two reports. The Detailed report was useless from my perspective--too much raw numbers. I would have preferred it in the Tools menu but that is minor. I am going to leave it as an add-on and play with it for awhile.

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